"I'm in love," Julia said, draping me with a swooning hug as I walked in the door. Thanksgiving was around the corner, three pies were in the oven and we were both home from our respective fortresses of solitude (otherwise known as the college apartment and condo, respectively).
"What's his name?" I said.
"He's dead!" Julia said brightly, and we both burst out laughing.
This is not the first time Julia has been in love. She has previously declared herself to be in relationships with such available men as Legolas, Captain Jack Sparrow and the stentorian blue muppet, Sam the Eagle. Were Julia to be believed, she has been in wedlock more than Henry VIII and maintains enough boyfriends to complete a Patriots defensive line. Her latest crush is/was the ill-fated French horn prodigy, Dennis Brain, whose scratchy black-and-white videos can be found on YouTube (Wiki delightfully described Brain as "notoriously careless; his instrument for many years was a French-made piston valve horn with an impressive array of dents, and Britten autographed one score 'For Dennis - in case he loses the other one'.") Julia, who recently discovered a new interest and talent in the French horn (she's asked for music books for Christmas), set up a computer on the kitchen counter so all the rest of us could share in the glory of her man.
As the video was rolling, Julia propped her head on her elbow and, with a dreamy expression, said, "He plays horn standing up rrrrrrowr, like a real man." We both cracked up all over the place. Mom, shuffling pies around the oven, turned to give us a Look. Then she came over to watch the little figure, in his suit and wingtips, manipulate his hand in and out of the horn's bell. He explained that the instrument was originally played without keys. "What's funny? I don't get it," said Mom. "He's dead?"
"You don't respect our love," sniffed Julia. Mom looked mystified. "He's so magical, he's like a magical horn playing man," my sister cooed, in what is possibly the only instance of a 1940s French horn player groupie. Mom went off to find a load of silver for Julia to polish.
"Do you want to know how he died?" my sister asked me as she filled the sink and dumped in the silverware. "It's so tragic. He played one of the hardest songs there is to play, one of the absolute hardest, with the London Symphony Orchestra, I believe. Then he zipped off into the night in his little sports car to go back home to London, but he crashed and died."
"That's terrible," I said, searching YouTube for a Ben Folds song. "Was he married?"
"I don't think so. I could have had him." At the sink, Julia was polishing a handful of forks. "He was 37." Julia contemplated the tragedy of this for a moment. "Maybe I couldn't have had him, but still..." And she began happily humming a Beethovan horn sonata.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Turning 210
As of midnight tonight, I cease being in my 20s and embark on a journey known as my 30s. That means I can no longer consider myself young and carefree, but must now start thinking of myself as slightly older and still mostly carefree. Such a change really makes you stop and think. Or, if you're me, it makes you draw up a bubble bath by squirting a lot of seaweed shampoo into the faucet. Then you sit drinking a rum and coke until the water has gone the wrong side of tepid. After that, you get a novel slightly damp (by someone who is considered more successful than you only because he has written a novel) because you haven't saved up enough to install cable.
Over the Thanksgiving weekend I set about having a life talk with my Dad. I told him that heading into my third decade of life was a bit depressing. He was fixing his usual that-jar-should-have-been-thrown-out-five-years-ago-mystery-meat sandwich. "You're not entering your third decade," he said. My heart momentarily lifted with the hope of a misprinted birth certificate. "You're actually entering your fourth decade." He paused for dramatic effect and for more sandwich layering. "Think about it." Instead, I wondered why I would listen to the advice of a man who has been saving saran-wrapped figgy puddings that expired in 2003 (perhaps because there might come a time in the nuclear-devastated future when England has left the building and he wants that particular treat).
Like indigestion from a mystery meet sandwich, though, my Dad's comment resurfaced. So, I contemplated my fourth decade, along with my navel, while drinking rum in the bathtub. If you convert my age to dog years, I would be Methuselah-esque, which means one thing - I need to get a dog. Or I need to find a kinder human-to-dog age calculator (and wiki Methuselah, who actually lived to be 969. The Biblical figure of Job died age at 210, although I'm not exactly sure how that relates).
Really, though, life has picked up this year. Look at all I've managed to accomplish: I lost a boyfriend, a pair of Labradors, and a house, but I gained a car, a condo, a bed (to be delivered next weekend, yay!), and a good job. For first time in my life, I go to work and end up with a paycheck whose zeros aren't all to the left or after periods. I actually have the financial stability to start incurring large debts like mortgages, car payments and taxes. This has made me very excited. (Did I mention I bought a condo?)
Ah, condo. Home sweet home, a place of my own, where the random people noises I hear are the neighbors and not my parents. I no longer have to sleep in a room with childhood things like dolls, high school yearbooks or a blanket with trains printed on it. I have cast all that off! Well, except for the blanket with trains printed on it. That's a very warm blanket, you know. In any case, I now have room, literally and figuratively, to make my own mistakes. And dirty dishes. And laundry.
Such a period in a not-so-young adult's life is known as Making Large Life Decisions. There are human caterpillars never reach this critical chrysalis stage. But I have. How do I know? Tonight, when it came down to heading home or going to yoga after work, I went to yoga. Body and mind, people. Body and mind. I also didn't take the highway to my parents' house, where the cable brimmeth over, but headed the other way to the condo where, predictably, I ate some leftover turkey pot pie and felt a little bored.
Also, cold. Because if life has taught me anything at all, it's that when I have control of the thermostat (and the bills that go with it) you can darn well bet that I will be telling people to pull on a sweater and some wool socks. There is no money tree in this house and stop walking around telling me you're cold, you have plenty of sweaters, for pete's sake.
So, maybe I am not exactly where my 10-year-old self thought I would be - with a husband, a house, backyard, backyard pets and a kidlet on the way - but I am still at a very good place, with a tub, some very good tan lines and maybe, just maybe, an excellent seven dog years ahead. (Or even a dog.)
Over the Thanksgiving weekend I set about having a life talk with my Dad. I told him that heading into my third decade of life was a bit depressing. He was fixing his usual that-jar-should-have-been-thrown-out-five-years-ago-mystery-meat sandwich. "You're not entering your third decade," he said. My heart momentarily lifted with the hope of a misprinted birth certificate. "You're actually entering your fourth decade." He paused for dramatic effect and for more sandwich layering. "Think about it." Instead, I wondered why I would listen to the advice of a man who has been saving saran-wrapped figgy puddings that expired in 2003 (perhaps because there might come a time in the nuclear-devastated future when England has left the building and he wants that particular treat).
Like indigestion from a mystery meet sandwich, though, my Dad's comment resurfaced. So, I contemplated my fourth decade, along with my navel, while drinking rum in the bathtub. If you convert my age to dog years, I would be Methuselah-esque, which means one thing - I need to get a dog. Or I need to find a kinder human-to-dog age calculator (and wiki Methuselah, who actually lived to be 969. The Biblical figure of Job died age at 210, although I'm not exactly sure how that relates).
Really, though, life has picked up this year. Look at all I've managed to accomplish: I lost a boyfriend, a pair of Labradors, and a house, but I gained a car, a condo, a bed (to be delivered next weekend, yay!), and a good job. For first time in my life, I go to work and end up with a paycheck whose zeros aren't all to the left or after periods. I actually have the financial stability to start incurring large debts like mortgages, car payments and taxes. This has made me very excited. (Did I mention I bought a condo?)
Ah, condo. Home sweet home, a place of my own, where the random people noises I hear are the neighbors and not my parents. I no longer have to sleep in a room with childhood things like dolls, high school yearbooks or a blanket with trains printed on it. I have cast all that off! Well, except for the blanket with trains printed on it. That's a very warm blanket, you know. In any case, I now have room, literally and figuratively, to make my own mistakes. And dirty dishes. And laundry.
Such a period in a not-so-young adult's life is known as Making Large Life Decisions. There are human caterpillars never reach this critical chrysalis stage. But I have. How do I know? Tonight, when it came down to heading home or going to yoga after work, I went to yoga. Body and mind, people. Body and mind. I also didn't take the highway to my parents' house, where the cable brimmeth over, but headed the other way to the condo where, predictably, I ate some leftover turkey pot pie and felt a little bored.
Also, cold. Because if life has taught me anything at all, it's that when I have control of the thermostat (and the bills that go with it) you can darn well bet that I will be telling people to pull on a sweater and some wool socks. There is no money tree in this house and stop walking around telling me you're cold, you have plenty of sweaters, for pete's sake.
So, maybe I am not exactly where my 10-year-old self thought I would be - with a husband, a house, backyard, backyard pets and a kidlet on the way - but I am still at a very good place, with a tub, some very good tan lines and maybe, just maybe, an excellent seven dog years ahead. (Or even a dog.)
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Pica-pica all over my body, or How do you like those plague boobs, boys?
Let me tell you why I hate thimble jellyfish babies, although I only found out what they were about five minutes ago (thank you Google) - when they lodge their tiny, ground-pepper-like specks on my boobs and die, they cause me more misery than a barrel full of angry cats.
Actually, I'd rather rub a shedding feline across my face than deal with the spawn of Linuche unguiculata. At least if I stop breathing, meds will help.
This is the sort of attitude that comes of having a fiery red and very itchy rash erupt across your entire chest and down your stomach. My personal version of hell in a bra started on Sunday night. I started scratching so hard that I woke myself up. By Monday morning, I was awkwardly examining myself in a sea-splattered catamaran cabin and openly weeping. My Monday afternoon, I was downing Benadryl by the handful and gulping airplane micro-drinks. My seatmates kindly avoided my eyes when I began to rub my itching front on a tray table. By Monday evening, I was tying socks to my hands with hairbands to avoid mad scratching and going through tubes of cortizone like they were going out of style.
You see, I have what is known as seabather's itch or seabather's eruption (oh, you fancy medical terms!). I found this out today, but I've known for a long time that I was allergic to something in the sea (yes, allergic to the freaking ocean) and I even deduced that it was probably the larvae of either jellyfish or sea anemone, probably both.
The problem started in Nicaragua, when I was 10. A few hours after snorkling around tide pools, my arms and legs would suddenly erupt in long strings and clusters of red bumps. These usually lasted a little over a week and itched so heinously, so viciously that I had to wrap my hands with soft cloths to keep from ripping my skin in my sleep. Ever had chickenpox? Or been stung by swarms of mosquitoes? Multiply that by a factor of ten. Then dump on a shaker of itching powder and jump into a rough wool sweater coated with poison ivy.
Jellyfish baby stings are worse than that.
Luckily, most people can swim through clouds of thimble jellyfish, squishing the creatures left and right, and not experience a darn thing. But, I am not most people. I am among the very small minority with an extreme hypersensitivity to the itty, bitty sting of the critters. When my body spots these whisper plumes of toxin, it cries, Oh joy! And erupts into a rash of red bumps.
Now that I have done my research, I've found out a few things. First, the worst - absolute, unequivocally worst - place to go if you have this allergy is off the coast of Florida, near the Gulf Stream. That's where most of the little thimbles tootle around in the mighty currents.
The Gulf Stream....kinda like where I just spent the last week. But that wasn't the only thing I did wrong, oh no. There is a no-no list of things to do when you're allergic to thimble jellyfish. I got every single one wrong. Every. Single. One. Of course, as one website put it, "the best way to prevent stings is clearly to stay out of the water. Anyone who has had a previous episode of seabather's itch is advised to not go in the water."
What you're supposed to avoid - if you must swim and in the Gulf Stream particularly - is wearing your swimsuit for a long time, letting it dry off or rubbing yourself with a towel - all of the things you normally do while living for a prolonged period on a boat, in other words. The problem is not all those jellies swimming around and bumping into you in the ocean, it's that they don't swim very well. So when you're paddling along, particularly near the surface where they like to bob and think pleasant jellyfish thoughts about sunlight, your bathing suit or t-shirt or hair will scoop them up like a net.(A wet suit can keep thimblings from getting trapped close to your body, although you might still get stung on exposed bits like wrists and ankles.)
When you get out of the water, the jellyfish babies begin to die. Naturally, they don't like this very much, so they sting you. The faster you kill them, by drying off quickly, showering in fresh water or rubbing yourself with a towel, the more they sting. Each pin-head-sized larva has several stinging cells. Zap! Zap! Zap! And, if you're like me, anywhere between four to 24 hours later, you're suddenly start itching furiously.
One of the most helpful pages about seabather's eruption, DermNet NZ, recommends (in rather Victorian language) that "if you think have been exposed to the jellyfish larvae, the most effective preventive measure is to take off your bathing costume as soon as possible and rinse the body in seawater that doesn't have the jelly fish." Modern translation: go skinny dipping!
Otherwise, there's not much to do. Hydrocortisone creams help for all of 15 seconds; there's nothing to take unless you're starting to become feverish and vom (in which case, get thee some steriods, pronto); and, despite what people may tell you about sodium bicarbonate, sugar, urine, olive oil, and meat tenderizer (meat tenderizer?), they don't do a whole heck of a lot. They might actually make things worse. DermNet basically shrugs and says that, once you're stung (and those bumps last for several weeks, you know), swab the area with diluted vinegar or rubbing alcohol to neutralize the toxins.
I immediately ran out to PriceChopper and got the biggest bottle of vinegar I could find. Touching the stings with vinegar-soaked cotton balls, of course, made them itch worse, but a second application (after I went crazy with scratching) seemed to help a bit. So now I'm still itchy, my chest looks like I have the plague, but at least I will bring to the Thanksgiving table the wonderful wafting smell of pickles.
Actually, I'd rather rub a shedding feline across my face than deal with the spawn of Linuche unguiculata. At least if I stop breathing, meds will help.
This is the sort of attitude that comes of having a fiery red and very itchy rash erupt across your entire chest and down your stomach. My personal version of hell in a bra started on Sunday night. I started scratching so hard that I woke myself up. By Monday morning, I was awkwardly examining myself in a sea-splattered catamaran cabin and openly weeping. My Monday afternoon, I was downing Benadryl by the handful and gulping airplane micro-drinks. My seatmates kindly avoided my eyes when I began to rub my itching front on a tray table. By Monday evening, I was tying socks to my hands with hairbands to avoid mad scratching and going through tubes of cortizone like they were going out of style.
You see, I have what is known as seabather's itch or seabather's eruption (oh, you fancy medical terms!). I found this out today, but I've known for a long time that I was allergic to something in the sea (yes, allergic to the freaking ocean) and I even deduced that it was probably the larvae of either jellyfish or sea anemone, probably both.
The problem started in Nicaragua, when I was 10. A few hours after snorkling around tide pools, my arms and legs would suddenly erupt in long strings and clusters of red bumps. These usually lasted a little over a week and itched so heinously, so viciously that I had to wrap my hands with soft cloths to keep from ripping my skin in my sleep. Ever had chickenpox? Or been stung by swarms of mosquitoes? Multiply that by a factor of ten. Then dump on a shaker of itching powder and jump into a rough wool sweater coated with poison ivy.
Jellyfish baby stings are worse than that.
Luckily, most people can swim through clouds of thimble jellyfish, squishing the creatures left and right, and not experience a darn thing. But, I am not most people. I am among the very small minority with an extreme hypersensitivity to the itty, bitty sting of the critters. When my body spots these whisper plumes of toxin, it cries, Oh joy! And erupts into a rash of red bumps.
Now that I have done my research, I've found out a few things. First, the worst - absolute, unequivocally worst - place to go if you have this allergy is off the coast of Florida, near the Gulf Stream. That's where most of the little thimbles tootle around in the mighty currents.
The Gulf Stream....kinda like where I just spent the last week. But that wasn't the only thing I did wrong, oh no. There is a no-no list of things to do when you're allergic to thimble jellyfish. I got every single one wrong. Every. Single. One. Of course, as one website put it, "the best way to prevent stings is clearly to stay out of the water. Anyone who has had a previous episode of seabather's itch is advised to not go in the water."
What you're supposed to avoid - if you must swim and in the Gulf Stream particularly - is wearing your swimsuit for a long time, letting it dry off or rubbing yourself with a towel - all of the things you normally do while living for a prolonged period on a boat, in other words. The problem is not all those jellies swimming around and bumping into you in the ocean, it's that they don't swim very well. So when you're paddling along, particularly near the surface where they like to bob and think pleasant jellyfish thoughts about sunlight, your bathing suit or t-shirt or hair will scoop them up like a net.(A wet suit can keep thimblings from getting trapped close to your body, although you might still get stung on exposed bits like wrists and ankles.)
When you get out of the water, the jellyfish babies begin to die. Naturally, they don't like this very much, so they sting you. The faster you kill them, by drying off quickly, showering in fresh water or rubbing yourself with a towel, the more they sting. Each pin-head-sized larva has several stinging cells. Zap! Zap! Zap! And, if you're like me, anywhere between four to 24 hours later, you're suddenly start itching furiously.
One of the most helpful pages about seabather's eruption, DermNet NZ, recommends (in rather Victorian language) that "if you think have been exposed to the jellyfish larvae, the most effective preventive measure is to take off your bathing costume as soon as possible and rinse the body in seawater that doesn't have the jelly fish." Modern translation: go skinny dipping!
Otherwise, there's not much to do. Hydrocortisone creams help for all of 15 seconds; there's nothing to take unless you're starting to become feverish and vom (in which case, get thee some steriods, pronto); and, despite what people may tell you about sodium bicarbonate, sugar, urine, olive oil, and meat tenderizer (meat tenderizer?), they don't do a whole heck of a lot. They might actually make things worse. DermNet basically shrugs and says that, once you're stung (and those bumps last for several weeks, you know), swab the area with diluted vinegar or rubbing alcohol to neutralize the toxins.
I immediately ran out to PriceChopper and got the biggest bottle of vinegar I could find. Touching the stings with vinegar-soaked cotton balls, of course, made them itch worse, but a second application (after I went crazy with scratching) seemed to help a bit. So now I'm still itchy, my chest looks like I have the plague, but at least I will bring to the Thanksgiving table the wonderful wafting smell of pickles.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Dance of the Hempen Jig
You can’t help but want to sleep on the net of a catamaran, a wide, tightly strung bed in the front of the boat where you spread a sleeping bag and go to sleep under the stars. I have now slept there twice. The first night, I shared the netting with my bunk-mate Laura. I squished closer to her, she kicked me in the back; I pulled my sleeping bag tight around me, the wind whipped it off; I fell soundly asleep, and woke up multiple times to groan at the stars, groan at Captain Ben adjusting his Wind Scoop above the hatch to his room, groan at a piece of rigging overhead going clink, clink, clink, and groan at the sun rising in my eyes.
I decided, in all my wisdom, that a second night would be better. This time, I abandoned the sleeping pad, which seemed to only make me incredibly sore, and brought an extra blanket for the wind. Laura and I stationed ourselves at opposite sides of the net, vertical this time with our feet facing the water. I ogled the firmament of heaven, in all its bejeweled and glittering glory, until my eyelids were heavier than an anchor. As the wind whispered softly and the sea gently moved beneath us, I fell into a downy sleep.
Which lasted all of an hour before the wind picked up tempo and the waves began to buck like bee-stung broncos. At one point, the net bounced so much that Laura flew up into the air. I grabbed my sleeping bag by the zipper and wrestled it like a crocodile. The bag won. I shivered, miserably, under my thin blanket until my sleeping bag relented enough for me to crawl inside. I then joined bouncing Laura in my best falling-off-the-boat impression. The waves surged and slapped against the hull like rambunctious toddlers on a sugar high.
I woke up with fabulous hair, a touch of grumpiness and a desperate need to use the head (that's a sailboat bathroom, for our landlubbing friends). In the...oh, I forget what a sailboat kitchen is called...Matt pacified me with gummy bears.Here is why you can spend several days on a sailboat and have none of the nighttime misery matter in the least: by 8 am, Scotty had discovered a way to swing off the halberd like a swashbuckling seadog. Captain Ben immediately joined him, declaring, after the first round, "Dude, that is totally pirate." Of course, this comment made Scotty take a foam sword in his teeth, grab the rope as he ran and pendulum off the side. As he fell, Scotty grabbed the sword in one hand and swiped it back and forth shouting, “Prepare to be boarded!” By the time the cinnamon buns were baking in the oven, the entire crew was doing their best mid-air pirate impressions and laughing fit to bust a bustier.
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